The Irish Question

letteratura inglese

The Irish Question

Some  authors had write about the violent history of Ireland. Ireland was a country divided in two parts, the Northern Part was catholic and against England and the Southern part was Protestant and wanted that England continued to rule Ireland.

London's parliament was protestant, so the power was custoded by protestant people. After the second world war, the Catholics organised a civil rights movement ag 212c29c ainst the protestants.

The people of Ireland have fought each other and suffered many terrorist acts by the I.R.A and the "Ulster Defence Regiment".

"A Volunteer's Day" talk about an I.R.A gunmen who fights against the British. But the problem with the I.R.A is that they fight like terrorists and kill many Irish people, like in "A night's incursion". This novel explores the effects of the troubles an ordinary people, we saw that this kind of soldiers does terrible things, for example in this story where the I.R.A abducts a family. The protagonist of this novel had seen them on the evening television news and in newspaper photographs, so that now, for the first time in his life, he was looking at them, and for the first time hin his life, his life and his husband life was threated.

Protestants also killed many people, the "Ulster Defence Regiment" bombed a square in Ireland in 1998 and killed 28 people. And was obvious that some of the Irish people want the fighting to stop, like "Sunday Bloody Sunday", an U2's song that talk about the violence in Ireland, the lyrics of this song show us that the Irish people are tired of this war between the Catholics and the Protestants. It is from the point of view of an Irish man at home watching more violence on the T.V. He asks for them to end the war because they are fighting an unjust war and killing too many innocent people. U2 has always asked for peace not only in Ireland, but around the world.

The Irish people suffered because they was very poor, and they ate only potatoes, their life was very hard. About this problem we had read a poem by the Nobel Prize Poet Seamus Heaney. This poem is called "Digging" and it is about Seamus that helped his grandfather to work in the field. Heaney often writes about the simple Irish life, because he believes that it is very important to the country. At the end of the poem Heaney says that he will not work in the field like his grandfather  but instead he will write. But we know that writing is another important part of Ireland's history, because there are many famous Irish writers like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and a new writer named Seamus Deane. The people of Ireland had often writed about their political, religious and economic problems. I think that while Ireland has a very violent and separated history, between the Catholics and the Protestants, the Irish still have created a lot of important literature.

Alessandra Marroni VB